Thursday, February 4, 2010

Andy McCarthy's Scathing Scolding of Obama

To no one's surprise, Obama seems to have reversed himself through the years regarding Miranda rights for terrorists. Allahpundit over at Hot Air reminds us of Obama's March 2009 statement in which is said that terrorists don't deserve Miranda rights:

“Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals that we’ve got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not,” Obama said.

Yet now we have terrorists being given Miranda rights. So is Obama now just deferring to Holder?

"...the main problem with Obama's above-it-all, government-by-speeches approach, is that the job of a president is not to vote present, observe, and provide us with running commentary."

....

"If you're going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the Attorney General argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn't work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you've got to decide. And if you choose to stay on the golf course while the Attorney General handles it, that is a decision to do it the Attorney General's way. Obama's decision, not Holder's."

The spin yesterday and today that Abdulmutallab is cooperating and apparently singing like a canary is just spin. And whether he is or he isn't isn't misses the point that the entire arrest was mishandled. If he's talking, great, but there was never any reason to expect he would given his new right to remain silent. He should never have been treated like a common shoplifter.

The administration is merely "leaking" this kind of information to take the sting out of the criticism of their bungling the arrest.

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I am a Conservative writer and high school English teacher in Shreveport and also work as a free-lance proofreader. I've been published at The American Thinker, The Shreveport Times, The Bossier Press Tribune and had photographs published in Bayou Bucks magazine and other local publications. I like dogs better than most people.